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Am currently playing Highly Responsive to Prayers (yes, the very first game of Touhou) on Easy, and it's a bit hair thinning. Most stages take no more than two tries to pass, but the second boss on the Hell path is kinda driving me crazy. Unlike Arkanoid, you have to actually try to aim the ball, and there are no walls for it to frantically bounce off on and break blocks, hm...

While superscoring some runs on Double Spoiler, I realize Suika's 6-5 could be dodged easily by snapping a photo when the second wave comes out. Maybe I am just slow in noticing the obvious but I dodged it the hard way, which is not that hard.

While it may not necesarily be mainstream, Touhou seems failry popular in mostr fanart cirlces. How did it get so popular in the first place? I know it is probably the characters but other than that the games are nothing more than bullet hell shooters with fancy patterns. Still, how did it get so popular thaty I see fanart, fan games and doujins all over the place?

Don't think you'll get anything more than speculation here. We came to know it because of its popularity in Japan. You can't really say how it got popular unless you were there with it before it became popular.

Speculation: their universe is almost only composed of cute, badass girls. Difficult (but fun) games tend to gather the hardcore enthusiasts too. The "nothing more than bullet hell shooters with fancy patterns" require immense skill to beat. I doubt anyone who's played it would deny that. It's the same reason why megaman and the original mario brothers are popular too. They're hard as a bitch and give you bragging rights if you clear them.

I have a bunch of friends who only got into Touhou because they love the music. That's one of the charming point of Touhou. Secondly, because it remains as "personal project" that the fans can interpret it in many ways they want, it's getting bigger and bigger.

Note, all the above are also speculations, but I based it on many source I knew of.

How does anything get popular? People play/read/watch the work or series, love it, and tell others about it. Those others also play/read/watch it, also like it, and tell others about it.

Touhou is popular because it's popular. People start playing Touhou games, listening to Touhou music and looking at Touhou fanart because they see other people doing the same, and give it a try for themselves. In the case of Touhou this is accelerated even further by the fact that the same goes not only for enjoying the works, but also for CREATING the works. People grow interested in it because others make derivative works of it, then make derivative works themselves, luring even more people in.

This cycle endlessly repeats until no more people are attracted (which generally happens when newer installments in a series become of worse quality, or there are no new installments in a series), at which point there will only be people leaving and none entering, slowly causing interest in the subject to fade.

But with the speed of the Touhou franchise's snowball effect and the amount of content it generates, I doubt interest in it will fade any time soon.